Dishwashers are designed to wash as many different sizes and shapes of food preparation, serving and storage devices as possible. To allow for thorough cleaning, dishwashers attempt to provide structural means to space the dirty item to allow high-pressure water containing a washing medium to directly contact the dirty item. It is an objective of dishwasher designs to also keep the dirty item upright during the entire wash, rinse and dry cycles to ensure dirty water is not collected. The designs of dishwashers further tend to prevent items to be washed from banging against each other. However this last feature is not a primary criteria in dishwasher design partly because minor touching of other items during washing is typically not a problem.
Some items such as glassware and dishes with trim on its edges are damaged by banging during dishwasher high-pressure-water cycles.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,394,285 (Arthurs) discloses a means to specifically secure stemware in a dishwasher. It does so by attaching one end of its device to the typical wire stringers in dishwashers and the other end allows acceptance of a stem of 3 different diameters. Arthurs does a good job of describing a number of patents designed to restrain movement by stemware.
Additional patents address means to securely hold and space objects such as stemware. U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,244,554 and D419,402 (Baker) provide a means to secure stemware (2) to the neck of a bottle. U.S. Pat. No. 3,624,673 (Merchant) discloses a device which is described as a double ended clothes pin.
None of the prior art discloses a means to hold and secure the item at a designated space between them during dishwashing cycles.